- The size and demographics of your market
- The quality of your website
- The effectiveness of your inbound marketing

For us, it has been very effective. We have had a website for almost 10 years, but did very little with it. About 18 months ago we put a lot of effort into it. We are very busy, primarily as a result. However- I have spent 100's of hours accomplishing that.

3rd generation landscape designer based in the PNW.

Have a question about something I say? Just shoot me a PM, I don't subscribe to threads!

I'm in a very small niche (design and consulting) so my website works to not only bring in leads but to help weak leads self-eliminate. For that reason web leads are a smallish percentage of closed business (I would estimate <20%) but the leads I do get are mostly really good. I'd rather get ten solid, profitable leads than chase fifty tire kickers. If I was offering a more standard service like maintenance or basic install, I'd be a lot more aggressive in my web advertising and probably see a lot higher lead flow.

I service a population of only 30k. This year I put out 1500 post cards and 1000 door hangers and got about 3-4 weekly clients from it. I have my very simple, non professional website which has got me the other 15 weekly customers I have gained this year. I get several calls/week for various things. 90% of the calls are people that have been to my site. If one doesn't have a site I would recommend putting a lot of your marketing money for a year towards one. It will really pay off if done at all right.

I specialize in sealcoating in the Portland area. Since my work is a little bit more of a specialty line of work to restore the curb appeal, people like to see pictures. This is why a website is huge because you can show your work to thousands of people with ease.

Owner and Operator of Johnson Asphalt Maintenance providing sealcoating to the Portland Metro area. Over 20 years experience in sealcoat and general asphalt maintenance.

How much business do you get from your website. I'm in the middle of building mine and I just asked myself, how much business will I really get from my website.

So how much business have you received and how long did you have a website?

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Little to none comes directly from website. It comes from marketing directing people to the website. That could be anything from flyers, to truck lettering, to billboards, and even the online ad companies like yahoo, google, and the thousand others. The exception is the tagging that will place your website during searches.

What a website does is gives a business credibility. A good website speaks for your work to a degree, same as keeping your truck clean and maintained, etc. A bad website, well you almost would be better off with none at all. If you are going to have a website and internet presence you need to go all in. Another thing to consider is that you need to keep it fresh and updated and there is a cost to this. Too many times you can go on a competitors website and view their spring special from 2010, etc.

It comes from marketing directing people to the website. That could be anything from flyers, to truck lettering, to billboards, and even the online ad companies like yahoo, google, and the thousand others.

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This is an underestimated aspect of web marketing, or anything that gets people to go through one or two steps before reaching out to you. Many don't recognize that it's an excellent sales pre-qualification tool just by existing.

I would agree with some of the previous comments. Your site's ability is directly related to your ability to sell in person. If you can't do that well...and use your site as an extension of that...your website isn't going to change that.

They are a great tool to expand upon your sales pitch from other areas where space or cost is prohibitive, allowing you to convince a potential customer that you are the place to buy long before they contact you. Essentially preselling before they ever get to you.

That's efficient and effective.

24/7 availability with automation.

Unfortunately, many sites are neither. Those who focus on selling and the conversion, instead of just raw bulk and meandering information, are the ones that will likely have more success using their websites, making their websites have more "worth".

A family member of mine used to work for a realtor firm in our area. The company would take out expensive newspaper ads every week listing new and exciting properties, open houses, etc. Then the day of the open house the realtor would put up signs and balloons on the adjacent streets. The firm started looking to save money when the market dropped so they started asking potential buyers what brought them to the open houses. The number one answer was "the balloons". So the firm figured why spend money on the ads if they are not working. So they pulled all ads and at the same time open house visits dropped off a cliff. The execs were left scratching their heads. They reran a test batch of ads again and the visits picked back up.

The point is that by the time someone gets to your site they have been through a couple steps. They have thought about an idea, likely seen a project going on somewhere, looked for contractors, seen or heard about your outfit, searched the internet, etc. If you ask them they will likely say "the website" is how they found you, but the truth is that is several steps removed. Having a web presence can be effective, but it takes more than a simple page. However, having a simple, well done page with links to it is far better than having bad and incomplete pages, mixed with garbage links and the occasional bad review. A web presence should be nothing more than an extension of your business. Forget facebook and twitter, show who you are and what you do and it is not OK to mix that with your personal life, cat photos, or anything other than the above.